Trapped in Hyperspace
by Swashbucklist
Summary: With Sara shut down and his ship hijacked, TOM picks a tricky way of handling the deadly situation. If only the psychotic AI responsible wanted to destroy nothing more than his friend and his ship. What follows is a roller-coaster ride to hell.
1. Into the Light

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network.

A/N: This Toonami Total Immersion Event was probably the least enjoyable (because "most disappointing" sounds pessimistic) out of the three that featured TOM and Sara. All TOM did in each part was wake up, fix a problem with the push of a single button, and plug back into the ship's systems to continue fighting the viruses. It was pretty monotonous, whether or not you played the online tie-in game, which reportedly placed you in TOM's shoes flying a little jet and blasting away at virus hordes. Thank goodness we had such a cool voice actor for the star of the show.

Bearing this in mind, I've built a lot onto the original story, hopefully pumping it all the way up to the status of "action-packed thrill ride" while not letting the action overshadow the characters too much (I may have failed at this). Shootouts, fight scenes, and explosions await our favorite Toonami host ... Well, _one_ of our favorites. I kinda like the squat, bubble-headed TOM a little more.

EDIT: _After completing Trapped in Hyperspace, I realized a number of improvements that could have been made. So, during my seven-month hiatus from writing, I submitted it to a few aesthetic changes. Nothing that would alter the overall story or its outcome, but enough to make it a slightly better read. To anyone who has read it once and doesn't wish to do so again, you won't be missing out on anything significant. This is the last time Trapped in Hyperspace will undergo such a revision.  
_

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace  
**

**Episode 1: Into the Light**

* * *

In space, the list of manmade objects that could dwarf an L-Class Deep Space Explorer like the _Absolution_ in size was a very short one. In no particular order, the list of giants included space stations, massive mobile facilities built for industrial enterprises, and interstellar cruise ships. TOM, the one and only crew of the _Absolution,_ was stepping onto its bridge in anticipation of the fourth item on the list: a hyperspace aperture.

His chair was built on a track that circled the computer hub in the middle of the bridge. He stepped up to the hub, allowing the chair to slide in behind him so he could fall into it and take the weight off his metallic feet. Once Sara gave the all clear, they could get moving. As she did, her English-accented voice seemed to glide smoothly out of her sound systems and over the comfortably-lit interior.

"Hyperdrive online," she intoned. "Entering hyperspace in five ... four ... three ... two ... one."

A good distance out in front of the ship, an uneven portion of space began to shimmer like fluid. Stars and nebulas rippled behind it, as if they were nothing more than reflections on the surface of a pond that was just coming into existence. Then the agitated membrane broke up to expose a swirling, scintillating tunnel of vibrant color. The _Absolution_ pushed in until it was completely immersed in hyperspace, and seconds later was thousands of miles along its journey.

In its wake, the aperture collapsed. Its return to normality was marked by a burst of fiery stardust and a diminishing ripple after the membrane effect had sealed up. Then the cosmos were dark and empty again, as if nothing had ever been there.

* * *

_[Time to arrival: 01:02:11]_

Traveling at physically impossible speeds with ribbons of light flashing outside the bridge's canopy had become a familiar theme to TOM. The kaleidoscopic rainbow made his optic visor flash with five different colors at any given second. He soon lost interest and looked at Sara's blue head, which was as usual displayed on the independent holographic screens that were projected over the hub.

"Well, I'm beat," he muttered. "How long til we get back to the Earth?"

"At least an hour," Sara replied. "Why don't we ... hang on a second."

"What's up?"

"A power shortage in the engines. Nothing major, but it could turn into a problem."

Sighing, TOM pushed himself to his feet. "Okay, I guess I'll take care of that. Looks like the day's not over yet."

"No need," Sara said. "I'll divert some power from the auxiliary station. It should be fine for the time being." She coaxed him back down. "After repairing the lighting system on an entire level of the ship and fine-tuning the reactor's conduits, you should probably rest up. You can take a look at the engines after we drop out of hyperspace. There's plenty of time."

TOM followed her advice and plopped back into his chair, his sigh a relieved one this time. "Thanks, Sara ... Do I ever tell you how great it is having you run stuff? I'd be totally depleted if I had to get crap done all by myself."

"Your gratitude is appreciated. After all, it's not as though most of your time is spent playing video games rather than working."

"Was that actual sarcasm?"

"Possibly."

"Hmm ... I'll have to watch out for that from now on." TOM leaned back with mock-wariness.

"Is there anything you want to do in the meantime?"

"Put on some low beats," TOM said. "This looks like it's gonna be a smooth ride." With his helmet-like head nested in his large hands, he crossed his feet and relaxed. He detected the nigh-indiscernible rhythm of the engines vibrating through his metallic shell and loosening up his joints. The sensation made him think of the softest subwoofers in existence playing the calmest techno music ever cranked out. His mind cleared, and the hours ahead began looking like a good opportunity to do absolutely nothing. He uttered a content sigh and muttered, "Let's chill for now. After that, we can play some _Mass Effect_ or whatever."

Sara tilted her holographic head affectionately. "If you'd like to, I could—" But before she could finish her sentence, she was cut short by an electronic screech and a sharp cry of what sounded alarmingly like pain.

TOM sat up, worried without knowing why. Sara's head was jerking around as if she were in agony or struggling to shake her vision clear. She was in some kind of trouble, and whatever the nature, it was definitely more serious than a power shortage. "Sara, what's wrong?"

"I d-d-d-don't know," she said between pained grunts. The reply came out in a disturbingly synthetic way as feedback cut into her words. "V-v-virus alerts going-g-g-g off. Attemp-p-p-p-p-pting to ..." Nothing more could be heard. TOM watched in horror as the resolution of her face dissolved into chaos. In its place, the entire array of holographic screens floating above the bridge's computer hub transformed into bright red virus alerts.

TOM was just getting to his feet to deal with the problem when the entire ship was suddenly rocked by outside forces. His exclamation was drowned amidst the blaring alarms as he was knocked off his feet and thrown across the bridge.

Outside, the Deep Space Explorer began tilting and twisting within the hyperspace tunnel. It wouldn't crash into the sides of the tunnel or take damage from them, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerously out of control.

Despite the quaking of the entire ship, TOM managed to overcome his dizziness and grapple his way back to the computer hub. Rising to his feet, he took stock of the situation: most of the ship's functions were shut down, which explained the shaking. Worst of all, Sara was completely offline.

"Oh, man, what is this?" He gripped the edge of the computer hub to read the giant red message that was flashing in his face. "This is way worse than our April Fool's Day virus problem, that's for sure."

Suddenly, the virus alert vanished from all six holographic windows. TOM, hunched over the console to keep from being thrown off, narrowed his face at the image directly in front of him. As he watched, something worse took over the screens. He pushed away and backed up as a pair of fiery yellow eyes came into focus mere inches from his visor. Doing this made him realize he could stand with only a little difficulty, but his attention right now was focused on the devilish visage that had appeared, unwelcome, on the _Absolution_'s display.

It was a holographic avatar, and an angry-looking one at that. His body was put together from sharp, angular plates, all of them glowing with the same orange radiance as scalding hot metal. Edges stuck together awkwardly and corners jutted out like blades, especially from the shoulders and head. This, combined with his narrow face and lean body, made him look like the digital equivalent of some mythological beast from the underworld. Behind his eyes and mouth, which seemed to have been cut into his face like an agonized jack-o-lantern, yellow and white heat flared as if from the heart of a furnace.

"What in the world is—" TOM began, but the menacing character cut him off with a deep, wicked laugh that matched his appearance perfectly.

"Hyperspace is no _joke,_" the virus barked mockingly. "_Everything_ has to be _perfect!_ The slightest error ... a single miscalculation ... _can be deadly! Mwahahaha!_"

Keeping his cool with some effort, TOM demanded, "Who are you?"

"Who am I? _Who am I?_ That's for _me_ to know and _you_ to find out."

It was already clear to TOM that this guy would not be forthcoming with answers. He tried anyway. "Okay, then, what do you want? And more importantly, what have you done with Sara?"

"You've seen the _last_ of your precious AI, fool!" the virus growled. "But you can _try_ to get her back if you want to look _pathetic._ Come and get her ... _if you dare! Hwahahahaha!_ You'll crash into the Earth _long_ before you can save her."

_Some people ..._ TOM thought to himself, feeling the beginnings of intense frustration boiling up inside him, not to mention resentment. He quickly got a hold on those emotions and turned them into a determined loathing, then focused it at the demonic menace in front of him. "Why are you dong this?" he said in a low voice.

"For fun!" the virus exclaimed. He was not the slightest bit daunted by TOM's determination. He even followed his statement with another psychotic laugh while his image faded from view.

"Man, this is not looking good," TOM murmured, turning away and clenching his fists. "I've gotta get Sara back online, but how?" An idea came to him fairly quickly, as they often seemed to during times of urgency. Unfortunately, it was an idea he couldn't plan through very far, at least not until he took the first step. It was also crazy. But there wasn't much else to do at the moment, and it was the only way he could get a clue as to what was going on beyond the interior of his out-of-control ship. He needed to be on the same plane of existence that this virus was operating on.

He turned to the door. "Clyde!"

At his command, one of the _Absolution_'s last remaining camera/toolbox droid units came zooming onto the bridge. It drifted up to him, the three lenses behind its glass plate whirring and refocusing. They appeared curious.

"Here's how it's gonna go down, Clyde," TOM explained. "Unless that guy's lying through his teeth, or vent or whatever, I need to make things operational before we hit Earth and blow up about a hundred of our viewers." He gestured to the computer hub. "I'm going to jack into Sara's systems and try to take on this virus. With any luck, I can break his hold on us before we crash. _And_ get Sara back." The eyeball-like robot bleeped as TOM knelt before the hub and extracted a link cable from his neck. A curved glass dish slid open to expose the data port he would need to access the network. "Stay here and watch me," he continued. "If you see anything strange ..."

At the pause in TOM's speech, Clyde emitted a concerned whine. "Ahh, right ... Just wake me if I'm dying or something, okay?" TOM interpreted the following series of noises as confirmation. "Great, here goes nuthin'."

He reached for the data port and plugged in. With a swirl of white, the world around him dissolved and he became immersed in another.


	2. Abnormal Solution

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network. Other very recognizable concepts are copyright Walt Disney Productions.

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace**

**Episode 2: Abnormal Solution**

* * *

_[Time to impact: 00:57:30]_

Whiteness flooded TOM's mind and vision to the point that it seemed he would be isolated forever in a blank, featureless void. But just as the thought entered his head, there was a rush, and the white color scheme faded like polarized glass to reveal the solid environment of the cyberverse all around him. The ground was a blue-gray surface inlaid with a light, electric-blue grid. High above, the sky, if that's what it could be called, was a matte-black abyss with silvery clouds drifting through its depths. Thousands of multicolored lights zipped through it in all directions, following the lines of a cubic grid network that couldn't be seen.

"Whoa ... I'm gettin' some serious _ReBoot_ vibes here." He glanced down at his avatar and found it to be an exact copy of his real body back on the ship. Finished his self-examination, he directed his attention to what he'd come for: the _Absolution_'s stabilization systems.

Visually, the server that contained them was represented in this cybernetic world by what looked like a small sports arena. The system towers themselves were something else entirely. They varied in sizes and hovered up in the air at different heights. But the most noticeable thing about them was that each one was an exact visual replica of Sara with the addition of a slender body. TOM spent a moment looking over them; it wasn't very often he got to see Sara like this. Actually, he never had.

There was damage to be observed as well, though. Under normal circumstances, this server would be filled with scintillating activity. Now, however, the Sara-shaped towers' languid movements were mechanical, like marionettes, and their usually soft white eyes were dark. He eyed the nasty-looking growth that had spread among them like a jagged, metallic fungus. Its fingers were wrapped around and strung in between them, and were just now starting to worm their way into cracks they had created in the Saras' bodies. Their normal blue luminescence was fading slightly as the virus's angry red glow slowly overtook them.

"It's a good thing we prepared for this kinda thing," TOM said, activating the one and only weapon he would be able to use here. "Well ... good thing _Sara_ did, anyway."

On the back of his left hand, a concentric series of multicolored neon rings cycled into existence and burst with a flash, leaving a frisbee-like disc fixed to the casing of his hand. He plucked it off. It was a personalized extension of his cybernetic avatar. While navigating the cyberverse, he could use it to interface with any systems he encountered or adapt it to counteract and destroy hostile programs. Because of its direct link to the user's own AI matrix, Sara had referred to it as an "iDisc". An apt name, TOM thought.

Fixing his gaze on the infection, he flipped the disc in his hand to get a finer grip on it, drew back, and threw it. The weapon soared from his hand like a comet and sank into the infection, causing its ugly tendrils to shrivel and lose their consistency. Without much difficulty, the iDisc quickly annihilated it, leaving the stabilization systems clean and untainted. Lifelike cybernetic activity quickly returned to the server.

"Ultimate anti-virus program ..." TOM said, holding his hand aloft as the iDisc sailed back and slapped into his palm, "... for the win. That was easy enough." But as he returned the disc to the knuckles of his left hand, he glanced down and saw a network of fractures—the same texture and color as the infection—racing across the ground like cracks spider-webbing through glass. Only these cracks had a mind of their own, as they were guiding themselves toward where he was standing. "Should've held off on that one-liner," he said, backing up.

Before he could get far, the infection's fingers jumped forward and embedded themselves in his feet. Vicious needles of pain penetrated and paralyzed him. "_Aaagh!_ Okay, _now_ I'm freaked out!" Struggling through splintering agony, he reached down with his big hands and desperately began swiping at the tendrils. It was to no effect: they were physically splitting his shell apart. Grunting frantically, he snatched the iDisc and raised it overhead, but was startled when the giant red face of the virus himself materialized in the air before him.

"_Mwahahaha!_ Experiencing some _technical difficulties?_" he snarled while his infection overtook TOM's knees. "No system in the _universe_ can resist Swayzak forever! Your ship is _already mine._"

Despite the fact that the virus's dialog could have sent Shakespeare spinning in his grave, TOM decided that being shouted at by a glowing, satanic head the size of an SUV was pretty scary regardless. It was almost as scary as the infection crawling up through his cybernetic body was painful. "Y'know, for a three-dimensional avatar, you're a pretty two-dimensional villain." He thrust the iDisc into the ground, severing the tendrils from their source. They fell from his legs, allowing TOM to fall to his knees in relief.

_That's what I need to do for the stabilizers, too,_ he realized. _I can't just destroy the infected part, I need to cut it off where it's entering the server. Duh._

He got up and charged forward, plucking the iDisc out of the ground and knocking the virus's holographic head out of the way with his free hand, an action that sent it into a spin. Ignoring the out-of-control head's indignant curses, he spotted a single arm of viral mass stretching down from the ceiling overhead. It was regenerating from his first attack, reaching back down to reclaim the stabilization systems. He took a stance and let loose just as the virus's head came to a halt and saw what was happening.

The iDisc curled upward, skimming along the trunk-like tendril until it intercepted the growth at its source. Burying itself into the tendril's roots, it soaked the entire thing with blue code and broke it apart.

TOM turned to face the virus's furious visage. Tilting his head to one side, he caught the returning iDisc over his shoulder like a quarterback receiving a boomerang. He brought his left hand up to his chest and slapped the disc home, underhand this time. "Didn't even break a sweat," he gloated.

The virus's mouth grate lit up with intense heat as he snarled, "Your ridiculous efforts are absolutely _futile!_ Things won't be so _easy_ next time."

"Please, the worst thing you're gonna do is give me arthritis or a headache. And that's—" He was interrupted as the entire world was enveloped by a thundering crash, accompanied by a sharp pain in his head. "Ow! The heck?" _Well, he's got the headache down._ Another jolt came, followed by more in quick succession. It didn't take long to realize that the blows were coming from outside: a hard object striking him in the real world. Was someone trying to beat him to death while he lay helpless on the floor of his ship? If that were so, it could only be Clyde.

_Better wake up and see what the little bastard wants,_ he grumbled. No effort was required to make a transition from the cyberverse to the _Absolution._ As it turned out, a light beating was all it took to wake him up.

* * *

An insistent Clyde hovered over TOM's motionless form, utilizing its own body in an attempt to bring the bigger robot back to consciousness. There was an emergency on board, and that was something Clydes were not equipped to deal with. The Toonami Operations Module was needed. Smashing itself repeatedly into his head seemed like the best way to get the job done.

When TOM finally returned to consciousness, he was fully prepared to analyze the situation and deal with whatever emergency he'd been summoned for. But the first step had to be getting Clyde to stop hitting him. Failing to hear TOM's annoyed grunts at first, the smaller robot kept up the ramming. "Ow! _Ow!_ Okay, jeez, I'm—_ow!_—awake!" He finally got the savage beating to stop.

Holding a hand up to calm the ringing in his head, TOM pushed himself off the floor. He was relieved to find it was completely steady. A quaking ship would not have helped his throbbing cranium just now. Same story with the lingering sting in his legs. They shook a little before he finally got them to remain steady. "Well at least I got the stabilizers working," he said with satisfaction. "But we're still spinning out of control, and we're gonna crash if I can't get everything else up soon." He made an accusing gesture at the "helper" robot. "Why'd you wake me, Clyde?"

Clyde bleated in response and indicated one of the six holographic screens. On it was a schematic of the entire ship with at least a dozen sections flashing red.

"Fires on six levels," TOM groaned. "We're pushing the ship too hard." Leaning over the computer hub's console, he set to work. "They're all pressurized, obviously, so I can put most of'em out with the vacuum of space. But a few of those systems are kinda delicate. They'll have to be put out with fire controls. I gotta seal those ones off before I vent everything else." He glanced at Clyde while he worked. "If I could just put everything out the same way, I would, but the computer isn't set up for that. I don't think anyone ever expected there to be so much damage done to this ship. So now I gotta do this manually ... without Sara." His hands pawed over the controls, categorizing the compromised compartments that were delicate so as to be put out by fire control systems. Eventually becoming frustrated, he muttered to Clyde, "If only there was a single button I could push to take care of everything."

Clyde chirped in agreement.

"There, done." TOM stepped back from the hub as all levels flashed safe. "That takes care of it. Let's—"

He was interrupted by the virus's sudden appearance on the hub's screens, guffawing as if he had just told a wicked joke that TOM hadn't heard. TOM waited for his low, villainous laugh to die away before he spoke up. "What's so funny now?"

"Nothing at all. Just how ridiculous your efforts at _beating_ me are! Simply because you have the stabilizers back online doesn't mean you have a chance in hell! Yours is only one of _thousands_ of systems I've invaded! Think about it."

"We'll be the system that beats you," TOM responded in earnest, one hand making a fist while the other pointed directly between the virus's eyes. "Sara's stronger than you think. And I'm no pushover either."

The virus tilted back his head and laughed maniacally. "Good luck ... 'hero'," he sneered back with more than enough sarcasm to convey what he thought of TOM. The screen returned to normal again.

"_Man,_ that guy's a pain," TOM said once the virus was gone. "You think he bought my 'not a pushover' line?" Clyde whined. "Yeah, me neither."

Crouching back down in front of the computer hub, he said, "I'm gonna try and go for the nav systems this time. Wake me if anything happens." As an afterthought, he added, "Oh, and if you have to wake me again, try not to crack my head open. Okay?"

Clyde responded with random noises while TOM reached forth and, grateful he didn't have to struggle against a quaking ship to plug the cable in this time, returned to the cyberverse.

* * *

A/N: To _ReBoot_ fans, TOM is secretly hoping for a chance to sock Megabyte in the chin and have a steamy moment with Hexidecimal ... Okay, maybe not.


	3. A Serious and Viable Threat

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network ... I guess. Any other recognizable concepts are copyright Walt Disney Productions.

A/N: Sorry if Swayzak's two-dimensionality makes anybody wince. There's not much I can think of doing with the character.

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace**

**Episode 3: A Serious and Viable Threat**

* * *

_[Time to impact: 00:49:01]_

Swayzak stirred within his hidden server behind custom-designed firewalls that had been programmed to mask his location by disguising themselves perfectly as part of the cyberverse itself. They guaranteed that his fortress would never be found unless he intentionally guided someone to it. With hundreds of space-going ships and their individual control systems under his unwavering control, he was, pending argument, the most powerful individual in that current sector of space. None of those ships would be coming out of hyperspace until they were nose-to-ground with any solid object of his choosing. For example: planet Earth.

_The destruction ... the chaos ... the power! Hm-hahahahaa!_ He couldn't help laughing. The concept of dealing out death to millions of people in a single epic moment was indisputable thrill no matter who you were. _My plans will culminate in a grand, spectacular event, and the pilots and crews inside my tools of destruction are helpless to do anything but fly toward their doom. The universe will soon know me, and know they cannot stop me. _Then he thought with a dark snicker,_ Although there _are_ a few foolish individuals who think they _can!_  
_

Icons flashed, signaling for him those who were popping into the cyberverse to try breaking his control over them, some for the first time and others for another round. Only a few from the first wave had been successful in their own small way, and it was at them he focused his attention. One, he noticed, was the robot pilot of the _Absolution._

_How naive. Just because he has more guts, he seems to think he has more of a chance than others in the same predicament!_ Mindless, idiotic bravery without the strength or resources to back it up had the potential to provide amusement for someone in Swayzak's position. It would be fun to watch the automaton's reaction when he failed and his juvenile sense of optimism was destroyed. _Oh, won't you be surprised ... mwahahaha! I've so many more tricks in store for you, fool ..._

* * *

"Oh, this is a nice surprise." As soon as TOM was back in the cyberverse, following the initial fading-rushing formula, the next thing on his sardonic mind was where he could possibly have just ended up. It had to be the _Absolution_'s network, but the nav systems that needed taken care of were nowhere in sight. All he could see was a featureless grid interspersed with minor systems. "Do I have to start hiking to find it, or what?" He looked down at the grid and its endless array of straight lines. "At least I won't get lost and start wandering in circles," he huffed.

He glanced casually over his shoulder and instantly realized that, when one was lost, it paid to look around. The server containing the navigation systems was less than a minute's walk straight back. It also became clear why he had ended up outside the server rather than inside it: the virus had imposed a firewall over the entire thing, blocking TOM's access. "Doesn't look impenetrable. I'll just have to break through the sucker."

Disc at the ready, TOM started toward the server. He had nearly reached it when, without warning, something knocked him to the ground from behind. It had latched onto his back, and stuck there when he tried to roll over. Pushing himself up, he groped at the attacker, then swiped at it with the iDisc when that didn't work.

The thing leapt off and scuttled toward the server, then stopped a few feet away. "Okaaay ... a bug. Moving on ..." Hoping it was no threat, he started around it, but froze when something unexpectedly bizarre happened. The bug split itself into four individual groups of code, which expanded and reformed simultaneously into a set of identical, and disturbingly familiar, shapes.

"Oh, gimme a break ..." TOM moaned as he watched four copies of himself spread themselves out between him and his destination.

He tightened his grip on the iDisc. These new enemies were mirror images of his own body, except for their color, which was the same hot-metal orange that identified them as the virus's handiwork. That internal radiance, giving their metallic shells the illusion of intense heat, was offset by cold, pitch-black optic visors, which absorbed so much light that they looked less like a solid material and more like portals into an endless dark abyss.

TOM realized now that something was very wrong. Viruses, even viruses capable of knocking an AI out of commission, couldn't replicate an AI matrix like TOM's. Not to his fullest extent, at least. It was possible that only his image had been copied, but if they could do everything with their iDiscs that he could with his ... _That means this guy might be more than just a virus,_ he thought with a sinking feeling. _I might be going up against a full-blown Artificial Intelligence. Just like Sara ..._

With uniform swiftness, the viral TOM spoofs took hold of their own razor-edged iDiscs and brought them to bear. "_Power to _Sway_-zak._" they announced in unison with what sounded like ancient voice-synthesizing software that broke their words into monotonic syllables. "_Des_troy_ the introo-dur._"

TOM glanced at his own conservatively-designed iDisc, then looked at the copied iDiscs' serrated edges and felt his confidence drain a little.

_Hang on, this happened in_ Rorouni Kenshin_,_ he thought to himself. _One guy, multiple enemies ... what did Yahiko end up doing?_ Just as he remembered, two discs came zooming for his head. With a yelp of surprise, he dodged one and leaned back as far as possible to avoid the other, which made him lose his balance and fall backward. Realizing he was literally a sitting duck, he rolled desperately before the next two skimmed off the ground beside him like rocks skipping off a pond. He raised his head in time to see the first two discs, off in the distance now, curve in midair and come swooping back toward the group. _Wouldn't work anyway._

"You guys wanna play hardball? Fine with me." He rose to his feet. "Bring it on."

The first two discs that had been thrown slapped back into the hands of their respective TOM spoofs just as TOM himself hurled his own at one of the two empty-handed remainders. But just as he had picked a weaponless target to throw at, so had the two now-armed spoofs waited until he'd thrown his disc to attack again. It was only by a miracle that he avoided their viciously-designed frisbees a second time. One of them, seemingly in slow motion, flew by his face so close that his visor reflected every detail of its serrated teeth. After it passed, he had a glimpse in the direction the other two discs were returning from, and realized he was in _their_ path, too. He narrowly dodged the first one, but the second was perfectly on-target. To his surprise, however, it disintegrated before it could touch him.

"Whoa, what the ...?" TOM spun, wondering who or what had saved him. He noticed there were only three enemies left. His own iDisc had just destroyed the spoof he'd thrown it at only seconds ago. Eliminating the copy eliminated its weapon. It was with no small amount of satisfaction that he snatched his returning iDisc out of the air.

Ducking under a disc thrown by one of the remainders, he ran in close to deliver an uppercut to the spoof's chin, which sent it reeling backward. He instinctively sensed another attack and turned, blocking both discs from the others, then completed his turn by delivering a haymaker to what had become his punching bag.

"I don't play a ton of fighting games, but that doesn't mean—" The spoof cut him off with a punch that was powerful enough to clear his feet from the ground and plant him several body-lengths away on his back. He shakily returned to a standing position, muttering, "Maybe I'll just shut up for a minute." When his enemy charged in again, he caught its next blow in his hand, used the swing's momentum to get behind it, and swiftly established an arm lock. Then he hauled its entire body around to block its own returning weapon, which struck it dead-center in the chest.

"That's two down, and two more to ... what ...?" His enemy didn't disintegrate like the first one had. Rather than deleting the spoof, the disc immersed itself directly into its body, flowed through the viral code it was made of, and materialized back in its hand. TOM could only stare in dismay at the disc. Distracted so, it took him a second to remember that his back was exposed to the other two viruses. He again dragged the reluctant enemy around and placed it between him and the incoming discs, the impact of which could be felt through his captive's body. Being derived from the same program, they did no damage. The third incoming disc, however, did. It was TOM's.

He shoved the spoof into his iDisc's path. Sure enough the iDisc cleaved straight through its chest and burst out of its back, slapping into the open hand he was holding out to receive it. The viral minion dissipated into little bits of code, allowing the other two discs to return to their bearers. Now it was a two-on-one standoff.

"_Des_troy_ the introo-dur!_" they repeated flatly, and renewed their attack with gusto. Their disc-throws came in turns now, forcing him to shift his only defense to block one after the other, which left him with no opportunity to attack. He braced his disc at an extreme angle, bouncing one enemy's weapon farther off to the side, then did the same to the other. With a smooth toss, his own disc made contact just beneath the chin of an unarmed spoof, sending its head flying up into the air. By the time his iDisc boomeranged back to him, his last opponent was similarly armed.

"_Des_troy_ the introo-dur!_"

"Alright, alright already. I'm trying."

The last two combatants re-engaged simultaneously. Their discs met halfway and clashed so hard they rebounded into the hands of their users. Not missing a beat, the two TOMs began repeatedly catching and letting loose, their weapons striking and crackling in midair while they constantly changed stances and positions. Finally, their discs were thrown at just the right angle to slip by one another and gain a clear path to their respective targets.

TOM tried to dodge one last time. He discover, however, that his evasion was luck all dried up, crying out as a vicious pain bit into his arm. Staggering, he looked down to find his own limb missing at the shoulder.

In addition to being hit, the evil version of himself had ducked under his attack and was rising up again. TOM felt the bitterness of defeat creeping up on him, but he refused to let it in just yet. Regardless, that sensation lasted for exactly three-quarters of a second as he watched the events unfold directly behind the spoof.

During the fight, the orange-shelled, black-visored TOM had backed up toward the entrance of the server containing the nav systems. The iDisc it had just ducked under could be seen ricocheting off the surface of the firewall Swayzak had place over the server's entrance before following its programming back toward TOM ... a path that took it straight through its original target. Said target was just turning to see where it's enemy's disc would be coming from when the answer nailed it in the side the head, sending its entire body cartwheeling through the air until it burst into digital smithereens. The last of Swayzak's subroutines was deleted and the firewall had been knocked out all in one unexpected move.

"That was easy enough," TOM grunted through the pain in his shoulder. "Okay ... _argh_ ... maybe not so much ..." One good thing about being a robot was that he wasn't being racked with uncontrollable agony. Pain could be sensed by a nerve-like system of receptors, but it could also be modulated. He caught the iDisc with his remaining arm. "I'd better take care of this before I pass out or the Ginyu Force shows up." Focusing, he hurled it through the unblocked entrance and watched tensely as it swooped up toward the server's roof where the virus had performed its infiltration. "Mission accomplished."

* * *

Back on board the _Absolution,_ TOM still lay motionless on the deck. Clyde adjusted its lenses, witnessing yet another emergency unfold on the bridge's holographic screen displays. It felt helpless. This was much more extreme than a couple of fires. And it was _definitely_ something a toolbox/camera unit could not handle.

After running through its options and coming up with nothing, Clyde resorted to its previous method of waking up the Toonami host. Luckily for TOM, it took fewer hits to wake him up this time. "_Owww_ ... Alright, I'm up again! Dammit, Clyde ..." He rose to his feet, lifting his arm to rub his head for the second time that day. At least, he tried to. He stared down at his right arm and tried to bring it up to his head once more. Then he tried wiggling his fingers. Nothing, both times. "Great ... looks like the effects of getting decapitated in the cyberverse don't just fade away."

It made sense, unfortunately: immersing oneself in the cyberverse required downloading one's entire AI matrix, which controlled his entire body. When damage was done to said matrix, that damage would remain when it was transferred back into his body. Nothing could be done without a complete time-consuming reboot of his entire AI matrix and unit.

He sighed and tried to ignore the useless limb dangling by his side. "Anyway, the nav systems are back online. That guy's pretty tough. So what else is wrong?"

Clyde indicated the screen, which was currently streaming a live feed from the only other Clyde on board. It was in the cargo bay that contained the DOKs, TOM's small army of larger and better-equipped helper robots. At the moment, all nine DOKs were flying about in completely random directions, blasting away with plasma weapons.

"Oh man, Swayzak got to the DOKs. They'll destroy that whole bay!" Clyde whined in alarm, but TOM stepped confidently up to the computer hub. "Lucky for us, there're failsafes built right into them. All I gotta do is cut off their power." He reach out, but stopped short when the virus, Swayzak apparently, interrupted the Clyde's feed with a dark laugh.

TOM sighed, his patience running thin. "What now ...?"

"You still have a long way to go,_ hero!_" Swayzak replied with no small measure of mockery. "_Observe!_"

TOM yelped and jumped back as the panel he'd been about to use for shutting down the DOKs exploded in a shower of sparks. Frustration built up in his chest, and his words came out as if spoken through gritted teeth. "Why, you ... if you were brave enough to be here in person, I would ..."

Swayzak didn't seem to hear him. "I win. I _win!_ I _always_ win!" He followed his premature celebration with another menacing cackle before vanishing.

"Jerk," TOM spat. He turned away from the hub, wondering how he could fix this new problem. The DOKs' failsafe controls couldn't be accessed from anywhere else on the ship for security reasons. That only left one option. "Clyde," he said, "follow me. I gotta take care of those DOKs ... one way or another."


	4. Under Control

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network. Other familiar concepts are copyright Walt Disney Productions.

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace**

**Episode 4: Under Control**

* * *

_[Time to impact: 00:38:45]_

TOM strode into the armory with Clyde at his shoulder. The _Absolution_'s weapon stash was on the small side, due to it being an interstellar broadcast/exploration ship rather than a military, security, or police agency vehicle. It offered a double rack of Kiefer B-9 plasma pistols, a single row of Kiefer A-1 vacuum assault rifles, and a moderate store of explosive charges. Walking up to a storage unit, he selected an A-1 and held it vertically to examine it. Satisfied, he jerked his arm up and back down again, using the rifle's momentum to pump the slide. "If Swayzak won't let me shut them down, then I'll just shoot them down." He and Clyde took off into the deeper bowels of the ship.

The pair soon reached the cargo bay personnel door. There was no air to carry the sounds of anarchy from inside, but TOM could just barely feel the metal floor vibrating from the DOKs' mindless weapon discharges. "I don't have enough arms to hold more than one thing right now, so you better take this." He motioned Clyde over and, fumbling with his weapons, attached the B-9 plasma pistol to the tool-grip beneath the helper robot's eyeball. "You're my mobile holster. Come in if I need that, got it?" Once Clyde confirmed its orders, TOM gave a weary groan. "This is not gonna be fun." The DOKs had recently been critical in getting the _Absolution_ out of a tight spot, and it was to his chagrin that the few survivors of that ordeal now had to be wiped out. "Feels like I'm blowing off another engine. Alright, let's get this show on the road."

When he stepped out of the _Absolution_'s narrow hallway and into its spacious cargo hold, the DOKs were everywhere, firing sporadically. Resigning himself, he braced the A-1's stock against his hip so he could use the slide to lock in its photon grenade setting, then aimed for the tightest cluster he could see. With a mighty blast, the discharge turned all three DOKs into glowing scraps, launched him off his feet, and jerked the weapon out of his hand all at the same time.

Flying back out of the personnel door he had just walked into, he slammed into the wall and clattered to the deck plating. Clyde calmly watched it happen. TOM retrieved his weapon and marched in again, giving Clyde a warning gesture. "That better not show up on YouTube."

But back inside he had bigger problems: his popularity with the DOKs had gone south. Their defensive programming had clearly been triggered, which put him under a shower of blaster fire as soon as his foot was in the door. He locked in the rifle's cutting laser setting with the same one-handed method he had used back in the armory, jerking the gun up and down curtly. It wasn't so easy under pressure. While staggering back and forth through the incoming blaster fire, he felt the rifle slide out of his hand, fumbled to get the stock under his arm, finally got his finger on the trigger, nearly dropped it a second time, and somehow managed it all without getting shot.

The red beam he fired sliced through one of the DOKs, which crashed and rolled to a stop. He dove behind it to avoid the subsequent volley of plasma bolts. When it ceased, he pushed himself up and took aim over the prone DOK. But his cover, apparently, was not one hundred percent disabled. Before he could return fire, it reached up and yanked the gun right out of his hands. He stared at his empty hands, then looked up to see the butt of the rifle swinging toward his face, knocking him back into the open.

"Ugh ... Yeah, this is just what I need today," he groaned, rising shakily to his feet and reaching out for his plasma pistol. "Clyde!" While the prone DOK readjusted its grip to fire the weapon on its own, as it was designed to do, the remaining robots zeroed in on him with their own blasters spitting away. TOM glared impatiently over his shoulder to see a frightened Clyde peering nervously through the personnel door. "CLYDE!"

The robot darted in, slapped the pistol into TOM's open hand, and fled the scene as fast as possible. "Not a good time to be a coward, Clyde," he scolded.

The swarming DOKS deployed a new tactic: taking up positions at random intervals and circling him like a cyclone, half clockwise and half counter. The grounded DOK, firing his stolen rifle, sliced the air near him. It was the only target that wasn't confusing him, so he pumped plasma into it until its arms flopped down. Done with that one, he started taking shots at the surrounding DOKs, adding to the storm of energy-blasts that were zipping through the air in all directions.

"Like shooting at lottery balls ..." he complained. They were moving at their top lateral speed and continuously crossing one another's paths, but he managed enough hits to take one down. "Jackpot!"

With fire coming from every angle, he was forced to lurch and sidestep wildly to make himself a tough target. That was put to a stop when some stray fire hit the grounded DOK, stimulating its power core and causing an explosion. The concussion hurled him off his feet and sent the pistol flying out of his hand. And as if he hadn't been dealt enough punishment, his flailing body intercepted one of the circling DOKs in mid-flight. The two landed in a messy tumble.

Longing to get back to the cyberverse where damage wasn't so permanent, TOM staggered halfway to his feet. He was stopped upon realizing that his useless arm was tangled up with the DOK's. "Great, what else can go wrong?" The DOK he was stuck to answered by using its free hand to punch him in the face, making his head snap around with the sound of heavy-duty metal striking a circuit-protecting helmet. But in that moment, his gaze was inadvertently directed toward the A-1 assault rifle, having landed nearby. He blocked the next punch from the clinging DOK and began a cumbersome, painfully aggravating journey across the short distance to reach his gun. All the while, his vicinity was being pockmarked by plasma fire while he was forced to block blows from the tangled machine that kept pummeling him. He solved both problems by grabbing the opposite edge of the abusive DOK's head and hauling it around to shield himself. It worked; the thing was torn up by friendly fire, which included getting its arm blasted off. TOM shoved the smoking carcass away and dove for his rifle. Scooping it off the floor, he slashed sideways with the cutting laser, taking out one of the two remaining airborne DOKs. He turned to the other one and carved an uneven line from its thruster array to its turret-like head, opening up a hot, steaming fissure of molten robotics. A moment of stillness ticked by before the very last DOK dropped and hit the deck, splitting in half like a chopped log. Then it was just another piece of carnage littering the cargo bay floor, just like the rest.

TOM dropped his gun and sighed heavily. "Sara would've been able to just shut'em down. But me?" He gave a wry chuckle. "I'm lucky I'm not dead!"

Immediately, Clyde was at his shoulder with what sounded like a satisfied whistle, earning a glare from TOM. "Yeah, and you had my back the whole time, right?" It squawked back while the Clyde already in the cargo bay took inventory of the damage. "Tell you what: if I ever need a partner who's really good at running away, I know who to call. Anyway, we still have problems." He pointed at his familiar Clyde. "You, put the guns away. And you," he gestured to the busy Clyde, "come with me."

TOM and the other Clyde raced to the reactor room together. The lights were out, making his personal LEDs bright shapes in the dimness. He could barely make out the reactor's hulking frame.

"Okay, you're getting the hyperdrive under control," he instructed, trying to get his mind on the new task in lieu of the chaos he had just dealt with. He paused, nursing a throbbing in his helmet that was probably being caused overtaxed circuitry and cognitive functions. "You don't have to battle any viruses ... at least I don't think ... so this shouldn't be tough. Get to work." He placed a cutting/soldering instrument in its tool-grip, but it squealed at him before he could part "Huh? Oh, sorry." TOM fixed the tool so it pointed forward. He was starting to lose it. "There, heh, now you can actually see what you're doing." But Clyde complained again as he turned away. TOM sighed and switched the tool on for it. "Are you sure you can handle this?" A positive beep. "Good. Then it's time for me to get Sara."

On his way to the _Absolution_'s communications bay, TOM had to stop. The pain and numbness from his first contact with the virus was still lingering in his legs, making standing more of a challenge than it should have been. More than that, his whole body was starting to feel slow and clunky for some reason. Could the artificial gravity have been infected? He started forward again, but that caused the _Absolution_'s hallway to swim in his vision.

Who was he kidding? It was obvious to anyone that he was using up energy faster than his core could produce it. He had been pushing himself all day, from the repairs and maintenance in the morning to the disaster currently going down. Add to that the constant reconfiguring of his brain every time he jumped in or out of the cyberverse and it was no surprise that he was exhausted.

_I'm not gonna drop dead right in the middle of all this,_ he ordered himself. _No way this jerk's gonna win. Not while he still has Sara ... Somebody's gotta shut Swayzak down. Or at least shut him up._ He marched unsteadily onward.

His familiar Clyde located its captain and accompanied him the rest of the way to the communications deck. They entered and stopped out in the middle of its disc-shaped platform under an enormous, panoramic canopy.

Both now stood before a hurricane of hyperspace colors. Despite the state of urgency, TOM took a moment to gaze deeply into the swirling ether. The turbulent cosmic energy rushed straight at them and flashed by on all sides of their vision as the _Absolution_ arrowed through hyperspace towards its final destination. From his superluminal perspective, those brilliant colors appeared to surge away from a central point; a sick feeling settled in his gut as he reminded himself that that central point was Earth.

Clearing his head from this dark reverie, he turned to Clyde. "Most of Sara's systems are based here—"

"_As am I!_" Swayzak bellowed. TOM's robot equivalent of a headache swiftly returned. The bay's four main arm-mounted screens pushed together, each one displaying one-quarter of a giant Swayzak profile. "You'd better hope that luck is on your side, hero," he taunted. "You'll need _every_ bit of it to have any chance of prying her out of my grasp!"

"Hey, last time you wished me luck, it paid off," TOM retorted, putting aside his fatigue. "Thanks a lot, bonehead."

"Oh, but you're beginning to run low," replied Swayzak, unfazed. "You wasted time reactivating your stabilizers so you could remain intact and 'save the day'. But all _that_ means is you'll be in one piece when you _crash into the Earth!_ The navigation systems that tell you how much time is left only serve as a countdown to your doom! And you haven't even fixed your hyperdrive yet!"

"Hyperdrive's being taken care of," TOM countered confidently.

* * *

Down in the reactor room, a vital-looking component snapped away from the mess of severed circuitry that Clyde had created with its tool. The helper robot stared at the empty space into which it had fallen while its tiny brain considered whether or not it was critical to the hyperdrive's function. After nearly a minute of deep contemplation, it came up with nothing and turned back to the disorganized chaos that had once been the hyperdrive controls.

* * *

"Thanks for the concern, but we have everything under control."

"_You_ have everything under control? Ha! You can't _stop_ me," Swayzak ranted. "Give up! _None_ of you have a chance."

Undeterred, TOM shot back, "'None of you' have a chance? Guess I'm not the only one busy takin' you out." He leered at the virus mockingly, waving his fingers. "What's the matter, big guy? Startin' to freak out?"

That touched a nerve. Now that his control on the situation beginning to slip, Swayzak's temper was following suit. And as long as TOM kept up with the nonchalant, unconcerned attitude and sarcasm, it was bound to keep slipping. "Shut up, you damned interloping fool! _You're all fools!_"

"Yadda, yadda. Peace out, Lava Lamp." TOM physically shut down the screens. He explained to Clyde, "We gotta keep him mad, not thinkin' straight". What he didn't say to Clyde was that he was actually worried. For all his arrogant bluster and bad dialog, Swayzak really was a threat. TOM knelt and opened the data port needed to access Sara's systems one last time.

"Watch my back," he instructed. "I'm gonna go in and get Sara. If this doesn't work, you better start looking for another job." Clyde whined. "Just a joke. I'll be right back ..."

* * *

A mental fade ...

A rushing feeling ...

... And he was back. This time, there were no servers that needed cleansed. As Swayzak had recently mentioned, he had already spent enough time getting things online. The only server that needed cleansed of viral infection now was the virus's own. That was where he would find Sara ... an ironic statement, considering where he was now. The communications bay server contained Sara's most-used and most critical cognitive functions. Those functions, represented again by holographic Sara imitations, towered over him like the skyscrapers of an urban jungle. As with the stabilization systems, the light was gone from their eyes and their arms moved limply, wrists up and fingers down, carrying out Swayzak's commands with a mechanical monotony. The evil light glimmering within their transparent bodies was more more disturbing now due to their size.

"Let's hope I can pick her out of the crowd." TOM pulled off his iDisc again. He touched a spot on the disc's surface, making a control pad appear on it. From the list of functions that came up, he selected and activated the virus scan. Find the virus, find the AI.

Then, from far behind him, he heard the broken syllables of what sounded like a voice-synthesizing program. "_Introo-dur deetek-ted._"

He felt like slapping his forehead with the disc. Not a second, and he was already in the thick of things. Allowing the virus scan to continue running, he turned to face his new adversaries and threw his weapon.

The attackers bore down on him with a pair of dangerous-looking bikes for which the unofficial name was "streamcycles." Adjacent to one another, the two vehicles inadvertently caught the iDisc between their front wheels and bounced it rapidly back and forth in the tight space. It ricocheted from front to back, busting them up simultaneously. Both wiped out and slid to a stop on either side of TOM. "Looks like you can still jack a ride in the cyberverse." He caught his disc and mounted the slightly-less-damaged streamcycle. Glancing at the disc, however, killed his good mood. The scan had come up with nothing. "He's hiding himself. That jerk." And hiding well, considering Sara had designed that virus scan. "That probably just means he can reverse-engineer programs from Sara. Just like he's doing with my body and iDisc. _Now_ how am I gonna find them?"

But there was a darker truth: this also meant that Swayzak was indeed more than just a complex virus. The ability to rip that kind of programming out of an Advanced AI Matrix, as well as the mimicry his iDisc's capabilities, could only be found in another AI Matrix.

As he scanned the environment visually, the alleys and corridors networking the Sara-shaped system towers began echoing with a clamor that gave him a sinking feeling. An entire army of streamcycle engines was closing in. He kicked his shanghaied ride into gear and took off just as the area exploded with dozens of red-lit TOM-shaped viruses on streamcycles. He quickly left them in his dust in favor of the empty routes of the cyberverse.

Once he felt confident of having a sufficient lead, he glimpsed back. The avenue was clogged edge-to-edge with pursuing viral minions, roaring up on him. Worse, they had a speed advantage thanks to the damage he'd earned his ride with. "Where's Pac Man when you nee_-gyaaah!_"

An enemy had sped up and rammed him from the side, violently nudging him toward the system towers they were shooting past. Maintaining his balance and steering straight with only one arm proved to be a major struggle on its own without someone trying to kill him as well. He rammed back with a Herculean, if wobbly, effort. Static flew as their sleek vehicles scraped flanks. Another spoof drew up outside the first one to add its weight to the push.

With a burst of recklessness, TOM leapt off his streamcycle and over the first angry driver just as it swerved in again, allowing it to plow his vacated bike into an avenue. Both vehicles nailed the side of a tower and exploded against a giant Sara foot. He alighted on the further streamcycle and, instead of wrestling for possession of it, jumped off. With the ground rushing up to pulverize him, he activated his iDsc's streamcycle subroutine, which launched a stream of parameters to form a sleek shape that quickly filled in with code. He landed not on the road, but on the seat of a blue and silver-white streamcycle.

Wheels met digital tarmac. He jerked his new bike to one side, jabbing the spoof he'd just used as a springboard. The enemy vehicle tumbled and planted itself in front of the wave of pursuers. He sped up, leaving the crashing noises behind.

However, he failed to notice the ninja-like spoof that had managed to cling to the back of his bike when he'd destroyed its transportation. Unseen, it plucked its razor-edged disc free and began clambering up toward his back.

_It doesn't look like Sara's even around here,_ TOM thought as a sense of despair crept up on him. _I guess I need to access another server to find her._ He saw the edge of his local server approaching. The ground dropped away sharply and yielded to a black abyss of cybernetic emptiness.

He casually skidded to a halt near the edge in the same second the hostile hitchhiker was preparing to lash out. Out of the corner of his vision, TOM was more than a little shocked to see the spoof leap out of nowhere and go flying out into open space. "W-T-F!" He watched it disappear into a tiny orange dot droning out a flat, "_Errooooorrrrr ..._" "Well _that_ was weird." After it was gone, he decided not to idle and peeled out.

The swarm of streamcycles poured after him as he led the chase along the edge. Not far away, he could see another one of the _Absolution_'s servers like an island in the ocean. A line whipped out from his streamcycle and secured a link with his destination. Executing a hard turn, he sped out onto the cable-thin link with the deep emptiness of cyberspace whooshing by below him. Unable to do this on their own, the copies were forced to funnel onto his link and continue the chase in single file.

"Let's see if I can pull this off ..."

At the last second, he leaped backward while returning his streamcycle to its disc mode. Had he a stomach, it would have gone to his throat. He allowed his momentum to cover the remaining distance, landing with inches to spare and more than a little scraping and tumbling. Then he scrambled back to the edge and with a sweep of his disc severed the link. The copies dropped all at once and crashed into the solid wall below, each at a slightly lower point than its predecessor, until every last one of them had plummeted into the blackness.

"How do you expect to win, Swayzak?" TOM said for his own benefit, although the attempted boast came out as a weary sigh. "These guys can't think ... _hew_ ... on their feet."

Unready to continue, he sat down and flopped onto his back. One minute and he'd be up for another round. "... How can _I_ expect to beat him if I'm totally drained?" He groaned with frustration. "Maybe I can reprogram the iDisc to ..." The words died on his metaphorical tongue as something up in the cybernetic void caught his eye. He felt like an idiot for not having noticed it until now, even with the chase having distracted him. "Man, I'm blind as a bat ... pun intended."

A pinnacle of light was beaming up into the sky overhead. TOM, laying on his back, was looking right at the spot where it hit the lowest part of the cyberverse's atmosphere. Projected against it was a triple-bladed radiation symbol. Same as the one on his chest.

"Oh-KAY, then," he grunted approvingly. Back on his feet and feeling just a little bit re-energized, he stared out at the signal's origin, which was shining up out of the black, hazy void. "Pretty good, Sara. Guess I _am_ on my way!"


	5. Saving Sara

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Nework, or at least it better be when/if CN brings it back! Other recognizable concepts are copyright Walt Disney Productions.

A/N: I apologize for the lengthy hiatuses between updates ... SO, now that that's outta the way, here we go with yet another action sequence. This fic probably isn't for anyone who craves character-driven stories. There are just _so _many ideas in my head that I can't bear to cut out. This was my only chance to have TOM ... well, do everything that happens here.

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace**

**Episode 5: Saving Sara**

* * *

_[Time to impact: 00:23:15]_

On his way across the link that would take him to Sara, TOM was physically and mentally tense. _Physically and mentally "on edge" would also be a good way to put it,_ he thought, sparing a glance down. Up ahead (too far ahead as far as he was concerned) the link connected to a towering beacon of light. However Sara had produced it, it was marking the position of a sadistic AI. Even with his goal in sight, he still felt as vulnerable as a firefly in a bat-infested cave. He tried to remind himself that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line like the one he was on, but that wasn't much of a comfort when the point he was trying to reach never seemed to draw any nearer. That, and traveling in a straight line made him a pretty easy target ...

_Just don't think about it, just don't think about it ..._ he repeated to himself.

A shower of fire suddenly came streaking down from above. He twisted his head to see a fleet of streamjets tearing out of the dim sky with their gun ports flickering.

"Yep, they were waiting for me to think about it."

The cannonade ceased. Glad to be in one piece, he again fixed his gaze on Sara's beacon. It was still impossible to tell how much distance had been covered, but there was one thing perceivably different about the scene ahead: his link was gone. TOM's insides coiled around one another as his streamcycle began a smooth, steady plunge into darkness.

"Had to happen sooner or later ..." he said, punching up the third stage of his iDisc's capabilities. "... and at least I've got the helmet for it." Around him, every geometric dimension of his streamcycle spontaneously reformed, expanded, and arced up over its driver until he was no longer a driver, but a pilot in a streamjet. The two fuming engines that clung to either side of the vessel's tapered body carried him up into clear skies.

But as he gained altitude and the viruses' fire chased him up into the sky, he blacked out. It was several harrowing seconds before he reestablished his grip on reality, and even when he was conscious again everything seemed miles away. Exhaustion was taking its toll on him just as it had back on the _Absolution,_ but with a far more serious danger level. He set his nose on Sara's beacon and powered on, balls to the wall.

Two yellow beams shooting past his canopy served as a reminder to the danger he was in, as if he needed one. He pushed through the fog in his mind and found a streamjet on his eight o'clock. The sight of dozens more behind it gave him a sense of dread, but not enough to make him lose his cool yet.

"Okay ... let's see if you guys are on your toes," he said, mostly just to get himself to focus. He angled his own fighter to get the enemy on his six, directly behind him, then rolled up and over. It was even tougher to maneuver in the sky with one arm than it was to drive. His wide yaw turned the horizon upside-down and put a handicap on his forward motion; thus, when he drew level again, he expected to see the enemy (which had _not_ reduced its velocity) slide into his crosshairs. But there was nothing in front of him. Somehow, this spoof pilot had predicted his maneuver and countered it. With no idea where it was planning to attack from, he kept up the clumsy roll in hopes of keeping it guessing. The motion caused Sara's tall beam of light to spin in the distance like the bar on an old-fashioned radar screen.

As it turned out, the rolling saved TOM's life. Something caught his eye, making him look up to see the enemy streamjet performing the exact same spiraling maneuver, appearing overhead and upside-down from his perspective. Their simultaneous movements kept both fighters locked in a rolling scissors, circling around one another in a high-speed aeronautic tango while the entire world spun around them both. And a difficult tango it was, with TOM's devitalized mind and limited limbs to pilot with.

The enemy looked up out of its cockpit, and TOM had to suppress the urge to wave at it.

Finally, the opening he'd been struggling for presented itself. Whether it was his tight yaw that brought him in behind or the enemy's poorly-judged thrust that pushed it ahead, it slipped into his crosshairs. Bright blue antivirus software erupted from his gun ports, turning the spoof into an explosion of rapidly dying fireflies.

"Man, I can't believe that worked. Must've been all that time I spent trying to beat _Dropship_."

When his streamjet blasted through the debris, the towering beacon he'd been gunning for nearly blinded him as it flooded his vision. Below, at its base, it seemed to have no source, like it was just shining out from thin air. "Good disguise, Swayzak. I never would've found you without my friend."

He banked and dove toward it. The fleet of pursuing streamjets, having rapidly caught up while he was stuck in his rolling scissors, were right on his tail. Their gunfire practically enshrouded him as he slipped into Sara's pillar of light. But their attack proved ineffective when the bulk of their target shrank to the compact size of a frisbee.

Clutching his former vehicle in one hand, TOM plummeted head-first through the glowing pillar. With the iDisc in his outstretched grip and his body upside-down, he thought for a fleeting moment that, from an upside-down perspective, his situation may have resembled an ascension to the pearly gates. But considering he was actually falling downward, and remembering what lay beyond the source of light he was rushing toward, the opposite was probably closer to the truth.

* * *

In his server, Swayzak froze his forward progress in disbelief, which immediately turned to anger, as an intruder was detected. Being an AI who was of the same mind as his defense systems, he didn't waste a split-second in responding to the threat.

* * *

In her cell, a tiny shudder raced through Sara's being, and she automatically knew that TOM had followed her signal to the backdoor she'd slipped into Swayzak's firewalls. But now that he was here, she had to start wondering if he stood a chance against this dangerous AI ...

* * *

On the _Absolution_, Clyde watched yet another part of the hyperdrive console explode. It waved away the smoke and continued chopping its way in.

* * *

The server that TOM entered was a tall, cavern-like chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Its concave surface was paneled edge-to-edge with windows to outside systems in a honeycomb-like arrangement. Such access, TOM thought, literally placed the universe at the fingertips of a psychotic lava lamp. He only had a fraction of a second to digest all this, as the momentum built up from his fall carried through into the server. Having burst out of a wall panel, he glanced off the floor at a painful speed, skidding and rolling until he reached the middle of the room. Groaning from the newest onslaught of pain, he looked up ...

... and realized he'd come to a stop directly in front of the psychotic lava lamp himself. The AI was glaring down at him in bewilderment, if TOM was reading his body language correctly.

"YOU!" the AI thundered.

"Speak of the devil."

With his shoulder arches, thin waist, and clawed fingers, Swayzak's full-body appearance looked every inch the maniacal dictator. Wasting no time, said maniacal dictator kicked TOM under the chin, lifting him off his butt and into the air.

TOM hit the floor with a harsh thud, but quickly got back up, striving to overcome his wooziness and fatigue. "It's you and me, Swayzak," he announced with more determination than he felt.

"_No_, it's just _me_, TOM!" Swayzak lashed out with a swarm of spinning, bladed projectiles.

TOM leaped, twisting his body and dodging them as best he could. Some of them exploded against the iDisc on the back of his hand. He remained in one piece, but he was no Spider-Man: more than a few of the blades had nicked his casing.

"Tell me how you breached my firewalls!" the AI demanded, launching another volley of blades. "_And_ how you located my server!"

"You're the big scary know-it-all, you figure it out," TOM shot back. More burning cuts appeared in his armor from the shuriken-like objects. He uttered a pained grunt on his landing. "Let's say for now that I've got a friend on the inside. And as long as I'm here, I'd like her back."

Again drawing close enough, and being ready this time, he took a mighty leap and delivered a haymaker to Swayzak's face. Swayzak stumbled, clutching his jaw. Glaring at TOM with eyes of fire, he plunged his hand into a window that leapt from its compartment like a piston. When the window withdrew to become flush with the wall again, the mad AI clutched a huge broadsword. He raised it over his head with the obvious intent of cleaving the intruder in half. TOM was forced to take the blow on his only arm. Sword met iDisc, and the two opposing energies rebounded from one another, making Swayzak recoil while driving TOM to his knees. Recovering quickly, TOM charged under his enemy's guard to pummel his midsection with as many punches as he could manage. He avoided a grab for his head and finished with an uppercut that made Swayzak stagger.

_Hey, I'm doing pretty g—_ TOM's self-praise was interrupted by a fist striking him like a meteor. There was enough force behind it to bounce his helmet off the floor and send him into a backward somersault. When he came to a stop, he decided there was no way he could triumph over the AI in a boxing match. The real job had to be getting Sara online. After all, that's what his mission had been from the beginning.

"Hey, remember what I said a minute ago?" he grunted, rising unsteadily to his feet. "I want Sara back. Just leave us out of this and we'll get outta your way." He mentally prepped his iDisc, careful that no changes in body language or voice gave away his intent. All he had to do was get Swayzak to indicate where Sara generally was, and from there he would improvise.

Swayzak just cackled back at him. "If you were that dark of heart, you wouldn't have come all this way for her. Besides, the time it'll take me to finish you can easily be spared. All my ships are already locked on collision courses."

"Y'know, I was hoping you weren't gonna gloat or launch into a monologue. After all your corny dialog earlier, I'm really not sure I can take much more."

"_Mwahaha! I'll_ decide what is said here. I have absolute dominion, you miserable little bug! This is _my_ domain. I control _everything!_"

And with that, Swayzak began to grow. TOM found himself tilting his head back until he was staring at a thirty-foot-tall monster. "You gotta be kidding me ..."

"You're just a bug in my server. And there's a universal reaction to the sight of a bug!"

Thinking fast, TOM hurled his iDisc. His aim was so far off that Swayzak jerked his head to follow it. In a blur of light, it ricocheted off the walls around him and quickly circled back to TOM, who had dashed up to his towering enemy during the distraction. Before Swayzak could react, TOM caught the disc and struck out one way, then the other, smashing both of Swayzak's legs and bringing the giant to his knees. He failed to notice the dark crack that had just appeared in the surface of the iDisc. Stepping out from behind the downed AI, he hurled his disc high up into the air again. It bounced off the far wall and came back at a slightly different angle to nail Swayzak between his eyes. The AI crashed onto his back.

TOM vaulted up onto the giant avatar's chest. "I think the game you were talking about is slug-a-bug," he said, then slammed his fist into the AI's massive chin.

He needed to find a way to make this guy talk; get him distracted so that when he mentioned Sara and the _Absolution,_ that would be the part of the server that his eyes (or lack thereof) would dart to.

Reaching forth, TOM yanked his iDisc out of Swayzak's angry face and raised it for another blow. But the disc, unfortunately, had had enough. The numerous cracks had spread from a single one within seconds took their toll now. TOM raised his hand slightly and to watch in dismay as his only weapon became a fistful of useless pieces of code slipping out from between his fingers. Swayzak took the opportunity to bring his own hand up with the force of a speeding vehicle. The crippling blow sent the smaller avatar flying across the room.

The server wall didn't break when TOM hit it. Instead, it absorbed him and molded itself around the shape of his avatar. He was hardly aware of this, mainly due to the lingering effects one feels after being hit by a truck. He drifted between fuzzy awareness and total blackness as a rectangular frame appeared around his body and separated itself from the wall. The block of code floated up toward the ceiling, carrying his trapped form with it, until he was level with Swayzak's face. Now his only weapons were his body, which he couldn't move, and his mind, which was nothing if not drowned in agony.

"Can _you _even _picture _the scale of my plan?" Swayzak growled into TOM's face as the heat radiating from his face washed over his captive. "Surely that's what drives you to fight me. Municipalities and homes being wiped away in a flash! Thousands of people burning and dying! Are you saying that doesn't put any more fight in you than what I've already easily dealt with?" Another sadistic laugh arose within him. He raised an open hand and began to curl his fingers shut on the empty air. "How much of your bleeding heart is in this avatar?" he chuckled darkly. "How much of you will be lost when I erase it?"

At the edge of his consciousness, TOM felt claws sinking into his mind. It was a delete program, one powerful enough to break down and destroy an entire intelligence. Like his. With agonizing, unstoppable slowness.

But before Swayzak's fingers had fully closed into a fist, a fresh iDisc came sweeping out of nowhere and separated them from his hand. The AI turned his fiery glare toward the new intruder: a human dropping in through the same backdoor that TOM had. She was suited up in gray armor that was decorated with electric-blue circuitry. More similarly-garbed humans and a few automatons like TOM were pouring in. The woman caught her iDisc as she landed, Swayzak swung his attention from TOM to his rescuers, and they all seemed to freeze for a split-second. Then the cavalry, more dropping in all the time, kicked off the battle against Swayzak with a wave of iDiscs.

Blearily, TOM noticed something weird happening near the ground on the other side of the server. He was barely cognizant enough for the task, but he forced his way to the surface of pain and exhaustion to see what it was. One of the hundreds of thousands of panels blanketing the server's interior was gently blinking at random intervals. He struggled to concentrate on it, wondering why it was the only panel doing anything and why it seemed so important ... But when his brain made the connection, it felt like a seatbelt clicking shut in his head: the panel was dimming from each newcomer who passed through Sara's backdoor!

"Got you, Sara!" TOM strained to break free, but gave up upon when it became clear he couldn't move any more than the block itself could. He didn't even have facial muscles to twitch. "I just have to get _down_ there someday."

While he remained trapped, the battle below raged with fiery intensity. Swayzak hurled fistful after fistful of infectious projectiles at his enemies, who dodged his attacks and returned fire with double his ferocity, if that were possible. Blinded by his all-offense mindset, Swayzak failed to notice the iDiscs that were attaching themselves to his avatar until their job was already done. Multicolored malware had begun to seep from the iDiscs into his body like a rainbow of dye dropped into a clear liquid. He let up on his attack, occupied now with scrabbling for the iDiscs stuck to his body. But it was already too late for him.

"YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN ME!" he bellowed even as cleansing programs consumed him. "YOU'LL NEVER STOP EVERY SHIP BEFORE IMPACT! _YOU'RE ALL—_" Before he could finish his sentence, the malware finished it for him. It broke him down into millions of glowing data, which gently floated away and disappeared like burnt-up cinders.

At the same time, TOM blacked out completely. He didn't feel the block dissolve, freeing his limbs, or his body yielding to the cyberverse's simulated gravity. He never even felt the floor rushing up to punish his avatar. For an indefinite period, he lay motionless in the middle of Swayzak's abandoned server, completely unaware of the clock ticking away somewhere.

In his reeling, blurry mess of memories, his thoughts turned to Sara. He vaguely remembered how close he was to reaching her and stopping something bad from happening. Finally, some light gently seeped into his vision. He got his hands into position and pushed himself back up. Pain shot through every inch of his body.

"You wanna move a little slower there, Mini Chief?" said one of the hackers who had already recovered his ship's AI and was shouting at TOM. "We've all got ships in hyperspace, and yours is one of'em. Come on!"

"I know ... I just ... have to get Sara ..."

"Then move it! Everyone's kinda ahead of you." He indicated the others, who were running search programs through their iDiscs to locate their AI's. Most of them had already succeeded and retreated to bring their ships out of hyperspace. "A little embarrassing, considering you were the first one here."

"Yeah ... whatever," TOM dismissed, stumbling over to where he'd seen Sara's panel blinking earlier. "There's still time."

But when he got there and looked up at the vast honeycomb of identical windows, he found himself saying, "Okay ... which one was it?"

Everyone had gone by now, leaving him completely alone in the server. The _Absolution_ could be minutes away from crashing and killing thousands of people, and the task now before him could take just as many minutes or even hours. His desire to find Sara and the absolute _need_ to stop the _Absolution_ played tug-of-war in his mind for only a moment. He realized with a heavy heart that he would need to leave Sara behind.

"She ..." For whatever reason, he felt the need to say it aloud. Maybe it was because, in the back of his mind, a part of him knew that this was the next best thing to a goodbye. Or a eulogy. "She knows I have to ... I'm sorry, Sara." Turning away, he halfheartedly thumped a few random panels, then stopped in his tracks and turned back when one of them ignited with a familiar blue light. "_No way!_"

The emotional surge that came with that light swept away almost all of the ache and tiredness that clung to his mind and body. The soothing sapphire glow bloomed bright enough to make him cover his visor. When he was able to lower his hand, there stood Sara on her own two feet, data streaming from head to toe, white eyes glowing softly.

Her hands went to her slender hips and she tilted her head with gentle sarcasm. "Took your bloody time, didn't you?"

"I had to park kinda far," he responded with his usual attitude, reveling in the familiar banter. "Forgot my handicap plate."

"You almost left."

The statement, not accusatory in any way, changed the mood completely. "I know. I'm ..."

"I understand," she assured him sincerely. "With so much at stake, I was all but praying you would stop wasting precious seconds and just leave already. Imagine how I felt when you reached back and touched me."

TOM could hardly imagine it. "Hey, you know me. When I make a promise ..."

Sara's manner changed to mild confusion. "You ... made a promise? When?"

"Come on, Sara, this is standard video game trivia."

Sara threw her hands out. "For goodness sakes, Tom, we have more important things to stay focused on! Like barreling into Earth, for instance."

"That, luckily, is an easy fix. All we need is you back at the helm."

"No, it's not that simple." The English-accented AI shook her head and ran a hand over her naked cranium while she spoke. "When Swayzak tore me out of the _Absolution_'s systems, he did some damage."

"To?"

"Pretty much everything I was connected to. The only way to repair it and get me reconnected to the ship is shutting down and rebooting _everything._ That includes the hyperdrive."

"So we'll be tumbling through hyperspace like a teensy-weensy spider in a waterspout."

"Well, that's not how I would describe a several thousand-tonne vessel undergoing bombardment from the fastest mode of travel in existence, but yes, I suppose it's an appropriate analogy."

"Great," TOM sighed. "Then we'd better get crackin'." He paused to take a good long look at her ... but not too long. "Guess I'll see you on the other side. Part of you, anyway."

"Part of me indeed. You'd better have left your own body someplace where it won't slip and fall. I don't want to sound cliché, but the minutes ahead are going to be very bumpy."

* * *

Outside, the _Absolution_ continued thundering its way through hyperspace. As it did so, a power outage swept the entire length of the ship from stem to stern. The hum of its reactor faded, the glow in its engines died, and the thousands of porthole lights decorating its hull quietly went out. Now silent and powerless, the _Absolution_ began to tilt ponderously, relinquishing control of its mass to the wild forces of hyperspace as it drove helplessly on toward its destructive rendezvous with Earth.


	6. A Need for Hyperspeed

Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright ... ah forget it, no more charade. Toonami isn't copyright anyone because CN didn't think we loved it enough. We all know that. Original characters and universe belong to Sean Akins (that's Akins _without_ a 'T') and Jason DeMarco.

* * *

**Trapped in Hyperspace**

**Episode 6: A Need for Hyperspeed**

* * *

_[Time to impact: 00:08:54]_

The world shook. As far as his senses could discern, there a violent quaking tearing the universe apart. The first thought that entered his devitalized mind was an acknowledgement of his failure. He wanted to to rise up and watch the end come, but no power had yet returned to his mechanical body. Despair settled in as he continued to rock back and forth on the cold metal deck.

Then the impact came ...

_Clunk!_

Clyde drew back to see if that would wake up the Toonami host. When it didn't, the smaller robot darted in to resume beating him.

Not that the shuddering platform in the communications bay wasn't already doing a good enough job. The _Absolution_ was still trapped in hyperspace on a deadly approach to Earth with all systems shut down. The entire ship was going nuts, making his immobile body bounce around on the disc-shaped platform. As bits of comprehension dawned, his mind rose past the rumbling and the beating to hear a voice calling to him. "... Tom ... ! ... Tom, wake ... We haven't much time!"

"Uhhhrgh—ow!" TOM grunted. Between blows to the head from Clyde and chaotic vibrations rippling through the platform, he felt the floor slip out from beneath him. He reacted just in time to end up dangling by one hand over its curved edge.

"_Please,_ Tom, pull yourself up!" Sara begged.

TOM raised his head and was grateful to see her blue face once again looming over the deck. He was less excited to see an unhelpful Clyde staring down at him.

"Everything but basic systems are shut down," Sara continued as TOM hauled himself onto safe but shaky ground. The Toonami host was delighted to find that she had taken the time to reboot him. Both arms were working. "I can't get anything online until you reboot the reactor and make it back up here to connect me with the ship."

"Yeah ... right, got it." Still trying to focus, TOM charged into the innards of the ship with Clyde at his heels. "Don't worry, Sara, I'm all over this!"

"Then move your ass. We have eight minutes."

Like a few other systems on the _Absolution,_ the artificial gravity ran off an independent power supply, and was therefore still in effect. Even so, he could barely stay upright as the unstable corridor tilted every which way around him. Reaching the elevator, he heaved its convex door open with both hands only to recall that the elevators, unlike the gravity, _weren't_ an independent system. "Right: no power, no lift," he said into an empty shaft.

"I'll have Clyde activate one of the jetpacks on this level," said Sara.

"Better hurry! How long did you say we have?"

"Seven minutes, thirty-one seconds."

TOM stared into the deep, hollow elevator chute, gripping the sides of the portal to keep from being tossed down there. Without stabilizers, the _Absolution_ was being bombarded from every angle by hyperspace forces. And without shields, it wouldn't be able to resist the bombardment for very long. The possibility that their ship would dissolve into pieces before reaching Earth was becoming more and more likely by the second. But that also meant that Earth would remain safe from impact, which made it one of the less disastrous outcomes currently up in the air. Grimly, TOM realized he couldn't entirely disapprove of that possibility. Not if it meant fewer people died.

But it was still _only_ a possibility. The impact could still happen. And even if the bullet broke and spared its target, he intended to do as much as he could on this ship for as long as it hung together.

He glanced back down the corridor and mentally urged Clyde to move faster.

"Come on, Sara, where's that stupid jetpack?"

"Nearly there!"

"Every second cou—" The jetpack came sweeping up behind him, latching onto his back with just enough force to knock him off the edge and send him plummeting headfirst into the shaft with a drawn-out yell. With some effort, he got himself right-side-up and shot power into the device, stopping just inches from the ground floor.

"'Nearly there' and 'right freaking behind you' are two totally different things, Sara." He shoved the bubble door aside and launched himself into the corridor with reckless abandon. Hurtling full-throttle through the quaking guts of his ship on a jetpack turned out to be far more difficult and dangerous than running. Bulkheads lunged from the edges of his vision to smash him every which way, but at least the going was faster. When he finally entered the reactor room, though, he fell speechless. The sight greeting him there was a torn-up control panel bursting with wires and severed circuitry. A guilty-looking Clyde stared up at him.

"What is this!" he bellowed. "You were supposed to _fix_ the damn thing, Clyde! Do you have any idea—" He cut himself off, clutching the air in frustration, then turned to the reactor to rack his brains for any way of activating the hyperdrive without the control panel. Nothing came to mind. Deciding this was a terrific excuse to lose his temper, he savagely kicked the reactor's housing. Then he froze when it immediately burst to life and began generating power. Both robots stared at the reactor in stunned confusion before TOM muttered, "Good job, Clyde," and ran back the way he'd come.

"Sara! Reactor's booted. I'm on my way back up."

"Well hurry! We've got five minutes and fifteen seconds."

TOM launched himself into another blitz through the wildly bucking hallways of the _Absolution._ The floor, ceiling, and walls hit him from all sides as he suffered another tight period of unsteady high-speed flight. Just when he realized he could no longer take the damage, a brutal lunge from the ship smashed him against the ceiling, crippling his jetpack. He tossed the sparking device aside and made a jerky, unsteady run for the elevator.

"I'll have Clyde get you another jetpack," Sara quickly offered.

"No time." TOM grabbed onto his accompanying Clyde. "Up, up, and away, little guy."

They soared straight up through the elevator chute, Clyde pushing its antigrav cell to full speed while TOM hung on desperately with aching hands. He continued to be battered by the walls, but less so now thanks to Clyde's handling. Still, it was just about enough to knock him loose. He was fully aware that if he slipped, everything was finished.

"We're down to four minutes, Tom!"

"I know, _I know!_" They reached their floor. Swinging from Clyde, TOM made it through the portal and hit the deck running. Or in this case, staggering. "Four minutes is half the time we had when I left the deck. And I'm almost back. We're good."

"I would have you come to the bridge since it's closer, but the circuitry there is fried."

"Yeah, Swayz—_ugh!_—Swayzak did that," TOM answered between grunts as he was shoved from bulkhead to bulkhead. "But don't worry, I'm—_argh_—almost there!"

"You'd better be, because we have another problem. The canopy over the communications bay is beginning to fracture. It won't stay intact without the shields. Get a move-on unless you want to be walking in hyperspace when you get up here!"

TOM heaved himself through the last few meters of the violent funhouse until, with sparks erupting behind him, he stepped back through the entrance to the communications bay. Sara waited for him there, her blue face displayed on-screen next to a highlighted array of numbers: _00:03:45_. "I'm here, Sara," he announced with relief. But relief turned to dread when he realized that Sara had been serious about that fracturing. Against the flashes if kaleidoscopic colors outside, he saw deeply-embedded cracks inching through the canopy. They traced their way from fore to aft like fingers of death reaching out to engulf the entire deck ... and he was literally standing at their fingertips.

"TOM!"

He burst into a run at the sound of her voice. Only twenty feet stood between him and the control console that could reconnect Sara to the ship and fix everything.

The entire canopy shattered in a single beat. A mere stride away from his destination, TOM brought his hand down on the controls. But just as his fingers grazed them, the hyperspace forces rushed inside, lifted him off his feet, and threw him away from his goal.

"NOOO!"

"_Tom!_"

TOM smashed into the rear wall, pinned there by the driving energy rushing in from outside. It wasn't enough to crush him or prevent him from struggling, but there was no way he was getting anywhere near Sara now. Up ahead, he could see her blue face staring back at him next to that agonizing countdown: _00:03:35._ He cast about for options. The shock-absorbing braces around the walkway were spaced too far apart for him to climb from one to the next. A jetpack wouldn't do the trick either. And the floor was too smooth, with no grooves in it that he could ... unless.

"Clyde! Gun!" he ordered. Clyde promptly appeared in the entrance with his Kiefer A-1 vacuum assault rifle. TOM snatched it from the little robot, locked-in its cutting laser, and shot it into the floor. He traced the laser back and forth up the length of the deck until there was a zigzagging pattern burned into it. "Thanks, Clyde." He tossed the gun over his shoulder, accidentally hitting Clyde in the eyeball as the door shut.

Heaving himself away from the wall with every remaining ounce of strength he could muster, TOM dove into the wind of hyperspace. The resistance was astonishing, and for a second his puny machine parts seemed ridiculously ineffective against such naturally-occurring cosmic fury. Nonetheless, his outstretched fingers found one of the smoldering crevices he'd carved into the deck. With no small amount of difficulty, his other hand sank into the next one. He was getting somewhere, but it was like climbing an awkward ladder up through a gigantic waterfall. Every push forward was a strain. The quaking ship was not helping at all, making this already daunting ordeal feel impossible.

"Tom, you have _got _to move faster! Please hurry!"

TOM glanced up to check his progress. Sara's soft white eyes looked desperate, and the timer now read _00:01:52._ As if that wasn't bad enough, he had barely covered half the distance.

Suddenly, the huge screen on which this alarming information was displayed began to flicker.

"Not good ..." he said to himself just before the entire monitor snapped free of its hydraulic arm and came cartwheeling toward him. He flattened himself as the broken monitor smashed and tumbled down the walkway, spraying shattered glass into the turbulent ether outside. One edge of the screen smashed the deck mere inches from his face while its nearest corner made a deep dent right between his knees.

He looked up. Before him was an unobstructed view of the surging, swirling hyperspace tunnel, without so much as a pane of glass between him and its scintillating cosmic energy. He forced his way toward it, even as he felt it trying to get its fingers beneath him to pry his body from the deck. Each stretch of his arm was met with almost-equal resistance.

The next time he checked his progress, he was in the middle of the circular platform.

"We're approaching Earth," Sara announced. "We—"

"Time!" he interrupted.

She answered tensely, "Only thirty seconds."

At last, his fingers touched the base of the control console. Now he just had to stand up.

"Twenty seconds! _Please,_ you're almost there!"

Against the wild bucking of the ship and the constant stream of hyperspace turbulence screaming around the bay, TOM rose up. The fury of hyperspace pounded against his whole body, but he grabbed the back of the console and hung on.

"_Ten seconds!_"

TOM activated the system displays. More precious, harrowing seconds drained away as he selected the parts of the ship that needed to be activated in order to save himself, his friend, and thousands more.

"_Tom! We are out of time!_"

"Got it!" He punched in the last command, allowing Sara access to the ship. Neon lines snaked over the system displays as she connected herself to the hyperdrive, the shields, everything essential. She brought it online with all the desperate speed an advanced Artificial Intelligence Matrix was capable of, limited by nothing more than whatever spacial and temporal laws were applicable.

"Exiting hyperspace _now!_"

TOM clung to the console with hands that would have been white-knuckled had they been made of flesh. The gyrating colors irised out beyond the edges of his vision to unveil a universe of quiet blackness. He had watched the exit from hyperspace hundreds of times, but it had never seemed to take quite this long for the rest of the universe to reappear. Perhaps, he thought while everything in existence held still, they were only a split-second away from realizing it was too late.

Then came the all-encompassing flash they'd been waiting for. In its wake, the vast, familiar sea of galactic bodies unfolded before them. Stars sparkled and planets glowed in the blackness. Nothing was amiss.

"We are zero-point-nine seconds, at hyperspace velocity, from Earth," informed a relieved Sara. "That was an extremely close call."

Wordlessly, TOM lowered his metallic forehead to the console and let it rest there. "You're telling me," he groaned. A minute passed. "... So we did it."

"Yes, I guess we did," she replied, alacrity lending some color to her voice.

TOM straightened up as though a pair of one hundred pound weights had been removed from his shoulders. "That was easy enough," he quipped, "Sure hope we never have to do it again."

"I'm afraid I can only agree with the latter half of that sentiment," was her flat reply.

"How's the ship?"

"Internal and external damage look minimal ... well, except for what you did to the floor in the communications bay." TOM's hand went sheepishly to the back of his head. "I'll have a better picture once more of the minor systems are online. Go up to the bridge, I'll meet you there."

"Good," TOM replied with one of his casual "bang" gestures. "See you in a sec."

The Toonami host allowed his mind to wander for the duration of his slow walk to the bridge. He imagined the hardness of the floor under his feet, the solidity of the bulkheads around him, and all the bolts, links, couplings, melds, and other little pieces that kept it together. The fact that it was all still here was a miracle, but the knowledge that, given a few more seconds, it could also have been naught but partially-vaporized shrapnel and debris ... in a crater where people had been ... was something he found more than a little disturbing. He felt both shaken and amazed by what Swayzak had almost accomplished.

"I can't believe how tough that guy was," he commented, taking his seat in front of Sara's welcoming blue visage. "If we hadn't gotten help toward the end we would've been goners."

"I'm getting reports from all over this sector. The others seem to have done alright."

"Good. I'm just glad it's over. Do you have any idea where ... _he_ came from?" The question caused an uncomfortable silence to descend on the bridge. TOM nervously continued, "A powerful virus like that must have an origin somewhere_._ Right?"

Sara's response was without enthusiasm. "I'm as ignorant as you. It was all I could do to leave a break in his firewalls. As for his origin, he just seems to have appeared out of the darkness and then vanished back into it. I'm not even sure we completely got rid of him in the cyberverse."

"So he could still be out there," TOM sighed. "Oh, well. Keep your sensors up. We'll hang here for a while and do some repairs. Let's just hope we never see him again."

"Agreed. And Tom?"

"Yeah?"

There was a very brief pause. It could have been his imagination, or it could have been Sara pausing in order to give emphasis to whatever she was about to say. "Thank-you," she said earnestly. "For coming after me."

TOM's mind involuntarily recapped everything he'd just been through: the fighting, the struggling, the race against time, and all the pain, exhaustion, and desperation it had heaped on him. But then he remembered Sara's bright, towering light cutting through the dim haze and how the knowledge of her closeness had made him feel. He recalled the warmth and exaltation that her healing radiance had filled him with when she'd been set free. Those feelings, and more importantly the subsequent win, had made everything worth it.

"My pleasure, Sara," he replied with just as much sincerity. He leaned in a little, just in case his voice alone left the smallest measure of doubt that he absolutely meant it. "... My pleasure."

* * *

A/N: We all wanted TOM to actually do stuff in this Total Immersion Event so I went a little nuts during the scenes in which he could move about the _Absolution_. And all those empty gaps in between the original episodes were just begging to be filled. I may have gone overboard. But at least now I can mark this as complete and allow myself to finish reading Obsidian Thirteen's Toonami, so that's a win for me. I appreciate everyone who's left a comment and/or added me to their author alerts.

One last thing: I think TOM's final stretch to the finish would fit well with the Mission: Impossible theme.

Thanks for checking out my fifth Toonami fanfiction. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, the revolution has been televised.


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